Kim Anderson’s dream job has become a nightmare, but patience is needed

Context and history often get trampled in this era of social media and hot takes, instant analysis and insistence on immediate gratification … or else.

But please try to calm down and pause for a public-service message about University of Missouri men’s basketball, which is in a miserable mess that’s likely to get worse (particularly with its next two games at Texas A&M and Kentucky) before it gets better.

MU is 8-10 this season and 17-33 in Kim Anderson’s two seasons, the first of which ended with even the ever-upbeat Anderson looking pale and gaunt and the second of which is gnawing away at his insides.

The honeymoon largely is over for a favorite son, he surely knows. The seeming dream job might right now more closely resembles a nightmare for someone to whom this is an all-consuming and perhaps defining quest.

But those already taking up pitchforks and torches are rashly ignoring reality and some instructive history.

First of all, because of the circumstances beyond Anderson’s control, it’s still too soon to even understand what’s happening here.

Secondly, as Anderson’s mentor Norm Stewart will tell you, it only takes a trickle of success to get some traction. It only takes the right player or two, not a slew of All-Americans, to get some direction.

“A lot of good things can happen,” Stewart said Thursday, “if everybody works hard and stays patient.”

Patience, of course, is not considered a virtue now, and it’s being pushed to some limits by a raw product that shows little visible improvement from last year to now.

But this is the sort of stuff that can happen amid rebuilding, the sort of thing you need to grit your teeth over and temporarily accept if you have an honorable, admirable person in charge that you want to see succeed.

There were reasons two years ago that at least one of the other major persons of interest for the job couldn’t believe what wretched shape the MU program was in and didn’t expect he could get more than 10 wins that first season. It was worse than it looked from the outside, too.

Establishing a lasting culture is why Anderson was compelled to purge players that could have helped MU win immediately last season and why he assessed numerous suspensions.

So, sabotaged by a depleted roster, hamstrung by academic progress rate issues and looming NCAA issues he wasn’t told of before he took the job, Anderson’s work essentially is just starting.

Stewart is right when he says it’s “troublesome” that the major NCAA violations that led to a postseason ban and recruiting restrictions stemmed from before Anderson’s arrival.

“It’s not affecting (Anderson’s predecessor) Frank Haith; it’s affecting Kim Anderson …” Stewart said. “Kim is caught in that vise and has to pay the penalty.”

It’s also ridiculous that MU officials didn’t at least hint to Anderson about the NCAA matter, something that’s really not answered by the mechanical statement the school issued saying the NCAA “had not provided the institution authority to share any information at the time.” But it’s also true that Anderson would have taken this job even if MU were coming out of the NCAA death penalty.

The infractions development, revealed last week, actually reinforces the argument that Anderson needs more time — which he’ll get unless the wheels come unhinged down the stretch.

While athletic director Mack Rhoades has much to consider in distinguishing between reasons and excuses for the state of the program, there is no doubt he prefers to see Anderson prevail and still is in his stated stance of being in the trenches with Anderson.

Besides, just from a practical standpoint, who would want to work for an A.D. who is only going to give you two years? And with an ongoing NCAA investigation still in play, too?

“You can understand if (fans) want it to work, but you can’t just stand up and yell,” Stewart said. “That’s not going to do anything. You got some guy in mind? Who do you think can come in there and win next year? There isn’t anybody.”

Stewart’s own trajectory is testimony to the alternative of patience.

Fifty winters ago under coach Bob Vanatta, Missouri won one of its last 14 games. A year later, it somehow got worse: The Tigers lost 20 of their last 21. So after going 6-43 in his last two seasons Vanatta was replaced by Stewart.

You could say, presto, the rest is history, considering Stewart’s 631 wins over the next 32 seasons. But the history was made only via crucial links in the chain.

Stewart’s first team went 10-16, and for his first few seasons he didn’t think in terms of winning so much as just being able to compete.

He couldn’t coax a winning Big Eight record until his fourth season and didn’t get his team to the NCAA Tournament until his ninth year because only conference champions were eligible then.

In a phone interview Thursday from his winter home in California, Stewart said he always figured things would work out.

“Two things I had going for me: I’m hard-headed, and I’m not real smart. So that helped me all the time,” he said, laughing and adding, “And when you’re making $14,000, there isn’t as much pressure: I could have gotten a job selling bricks for more than that.”

The entire landscape, really, has changed since then, everything from how the game is played on the court (shot clocks and three-pointers, etc) to how it’s played off the court in recruiting.

But at least one parallel remains: It’s still about getting players, which in Stewart’s case really began with the bridge to the future that was John Brown, from Dixon, Mo.

Brown arrived in Columbia in 1969, before Stewart’s third season, and would become an All-American. Brown never got to play in the NCAA Tournament, but he was a crucial cog in what Stewart called getting “command of” recruiting the state and making MU appealing for basketball.

No sooner had he mentioned Brown than Stewart began reciting some names along the way to a breakthrough, a random snapshot of the connective tissue of his program:

Al Eberhard, Mike Jeffries, Mike Griffin, he mentioned, and Greg Flaker and Bob Allen, then Willie Smith and Jim Kennedy.

“So one thing led to another, and then you get into (Steve) Stipanovich and (Jon) Sundvold and Ricky Frazier and Larry Drew,” he added. “And, of course, the Michigan connection and Anthony Peeler.”

In the middle of all this, Stewart broached another name: Kim Anderson, the Sedalia native whom Stewart recollected coming into his office before the 1975 season and reassuring him that this would be the year they’d win the Big Eight.

“I said, ‘Well, good, I plan on going to all the games: I’ll watch,’” Stewart said, laughing. “And they did. They won.”

If that sounds simplistic, or simple, consider that none of the three coaches between Stewart and Anderson were able to attract the best of some considerable homegrown talent.

“They missed the opportunity to get their base,” Stewart said.

None of which is to say Anderson’s career is destined to mirror Stewart’s rise just because they’ve each had to fight gravity. But Anderson has been straitjacketed so far, with no chance for anything to take root to even really be evaluated yet.

His second recruiting class is clearly more promising than his first, which was composed of commitments inherited or gained late after his April appointment. This may not be a great class, but it has promising pieces, such as Kevin Puryear of Blue Springs South, and could be the supporting glue element in real change.

As the region continues to produce players who could be difference-makers, such as Columbia Tolton Catholic’s Michael Porter, now it’s about getting more to buy into the program … one by one by one.

That has been and will be Anderson’s most glaring challenge, one made no easier by the last two years but that remains in his grasp to rise to no matter how disgruntled the fan base is becoming.

“There’s a player out there. Convince him of it,” Stewart said. “And then it starts.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 5:29 PM with the headline "Kim Anderson’s dream job has become a nightmare, but patience is needed."